What Book to Read?

This is the first of Robotham’s crime stories; as usual, I’m starting at the beginning of the series. The Suspect was published in 2004, and there now are five more books, the most recent being Bleed For Me (2010). These form a loose sequence; Robotham likes to take secondary characters from earlier books, and elevate them to narrator, and to include existing characters alongside new narrators. However he seems for the moment to have settled on Professor Joe O’Loughlin as his main character. O’Loughlin is the narrator of this story. You can read the books out of order, but I think it adds something if you start with Joe at the beginning.

Robotham is an Australian, though he sets his stories in Britain. He worked there as a journalist, and then as a ghost writer, with a number of best selling celebrity ‘autobiographies’ to his credit. This is probably why The Suspect is such an assured performance for a first novel.

Professor Joe O’Loughlin is a clinical psychologist, skilled, among other things, in making deductions about people from their physical attributes. Detective Inspector Vincent Luiz notices this, and asks him to help identify a murder victim. Joe recognises the woman as a former patient. Is this just a coincidence, or something more? Joe begins to wonder whether another of his patients could have been involved. DI Luiz begins to wonder if Joe is somehow implicated.

There are many reasons for liking this book. It is a self consciously ‘psychological’ thriller, so what happens inside people’s heads is what largely drives the action. This means there has to be stronger characterisation than in ‘action’ thrillers and Robotham does a great job of creating a whole cast of believable characters. As a clinical psychologist, Joe has insights into what drives his patient, Bobby Moran, but what he knows of him doesn’t add up. Joe himself is smart, thoughtful, self aware and self critical. He has weaknesses and well as strengths; ‘you should start looking at your own defects,’ his wife tells him. One of them is his unwillingness to discuss the Parkinson’s disease with which he has been recently diagnosed.

The plot is very cleverly constructed. Absolutely everything is there for a reason, though of course these reasons only gradually become clear. It takes a while for Robotham to set up all the elements, but then the action accelerates sharply. There is perhaps an element of deus ex machina in the ending, but if you look back, you will see that the clues are all there. The shifting balance of authority and power between the characters, which is integral to the story, is also well done. And in the end, it is the psychological truth that counts.

Another major strength is the power of Robotham’s writing. The use of the present tense by the first person narrator means the reader is right there with Joe as he gets sucked deeper and deeper into a conspiracy. We share his view of the world – its pleasures, frustrations and terrors. Some of this is conveyed neatly and precisely through Joe’s observations; for example, he notes that DI Ruiz’s questions have ‘all the subtlety of a well thrown brick’. Dialogue is also a strength of the writing, particularly as it is largely through conversation that the people with whom Joe interacts – his family, his patients, DI Luiz – come to life with their own view of the world. ‘”You don’t like me, do you?” I ask. “Not particularly,”’ Ruiz replies. ‘”Why?” “Because you think I’m a dumb foul-mouthed plod who doesn’t read books and thinks the theory of relativity has something to do with inbreeding.” “That’s not true.” He shrugs and reaches for the door handle.’

Perhaps ghost writing is a good apprenticeship for crime novels.

You can find out more about Robotham and his other books here. But start with this one if you can.